It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.
Read Chapter 7
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
If anyone wants to ascend, let him seek not the joys of the world or the pleasant things or the delights but whatever is filled with pain and weeping; for it is better to go into a house of sorrow than into a house of rejoicing. Indeed, Adam would not have come down from paradise unless he had been beguiled by pleasure.
Where there is mourning, there is no moral superficiality. Happiness and laughter are avoided; the calamity prohibits it. Sometimes we refrain from appearing happy out of regard for those who mourn and for those who experience harm. In the house of feasting, however, the opposite happens: Dances and songs bring reproof, since they indicate a disorderly life.… The “house,” however, signifies a condition or an attitude, not a location.… The one who goes to the house of mourning knows that everyone dies in the end. Once he knows that he has to die, he will not think about and dedicate his effort to owning something, if it is a possession that is lost in death such as wealth, reputation and honor.… One can understand “the living” in the following way: one who lives according to God’s will. Those people were Abraham and his descendents. –..
The final end of human beings is a state of blessedness. If the Lord in the Gospel calls those who mourn “blessed”—“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”—then Solomon quite rightly calls mourning the end of every human being, because those who live in that state of mourning are filled with an abundance of spiritual blessings. .
Name. "It is necessary for the sake of others "(St. Augustine, de B. Vid. xxii.) particularly for those who have to direct souls. (St. Gregory in Ezechial) (Calmet)
In this second part is shown that felicity is procured by a good life. (Worthington)
Death. Speaking of the just, for death is the beginning of sorrows to the wicked. (Calmet)
Some nations mourned on the birth-day of their children. (Val. Max. ii. 6.; Eurip in Ctes.)
“It is better,” we read, “to go into the house of mourning than into the house of laughter.” But, likely enough, you do not like the saying and want to evade it. Let us however see what sort of man Adam was in paradise, and what he was afterwards; what sort of man Cain was before, and what he was afterwards.
